Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man #12 (Final Issue) Review
The final issue of Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man is out now. As the series comes to a close, I’ll give you my review of both the issue and how I thought the series was. So let’s get into what happened in Issue #12 of Miles Morales’ story.
The comic opens with the teacher noticing that three students, Miles, Katie, and Ganke, are missing and asks Judge if he had seen them. A sensible person would have sent the dorm guy to go check their room, but instead Judge is the one who has to do that and finds out the place has been trashed. Seriously, how did no one notice him being kidnapped if they made that much of a mess?
Meanwhile, Miles has been captured and hung up in a suspension cube by Doctor Doom. You see, he has a thing against Miles because he invaded Doom’s castle in a crossover with the All-New X-Men. Doom makes it clear he’s going to mine him for every biological secret he’s got and then make a bunch of super-Hydra agents. Miles explodes with a new power, gets free, and begins to curb-stomp everyone off-screen.
Judge, the ever-curious person, goes to Miles’ house to see that was also trashed and runs into Cloak and Dagger, who scare him until he explains that he was his friend and thinks something has happened to him. They decide to gather their remaining friends and Maria Hill to try and find Miles, receiving a notice about an explosion in a warehouse district. By the time they arrive, Miles and Jessica have mopped up everything.
Miles finds everyone safe and sound, breaks up with Katie by letting Dagger stab her (just knocked her out), and the comic ends with their planet about to smash into the 616-universe.
Okay, review time…
You can tell they rushed this with the whole Hydra subplot. Doom’s beef with Miles comes out of left-field if you didn’t read the All-New X-Men issues, we suddenly get him having either a new power or a souped-up Venom Blast unlike what he unleashed on Osborn, and the world is getting ready to end. You can tell they just wanted to get things into place so they can close the Ultimate Universe with Secret Wars after Ultimate End.
It was rushed, so I can’t give it more than a 3 out of 5.
As for the series as a whole, it wasn’t bad. In fact, it was the one series I never got completely jaded or frustrated with. I flat-out dropped All-New Ultimates and Uncanny X-Men because they were flawed through and through and I just couldn’t take it anymore. But asides from bringing Peter back from the dead and Jefferson’s flashback, this was a good series overall.
It gets a 5 out of 5.
Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man #11 Review
Okay, after Miles basically got his ass caught for stupidly revealing his identity, he’s now captured by HYDRA. What happens next, you ask? Read my review of Miles Morales: The Ultimate Spider-Man #11!
The comic opens with the fake spider guys robbing another SHIELD place, only this time Jessica Drew is waiting for them. Much like every other time we see her trying to do something alone in this series, she gets her ass-kicked and de-masked. Would it have killed her to have taken Cloak, Dagger, or Bombshell? Then again, Miles didn’t even put up a fight so….
Speaking of him, Miles’ father is calling for him, but doesn’t have his phone. Ganke does, and it turns out he and Miles are both horrible at keeping his secret identity a secret. Their roommate for the last year knew all this time, because he’s not an idiot and these guys are loud. Roxxon was right, he did a horrible job of protecting his secret identity.
Miles wakes up to find Katie there waiting for him, and she explains she had nothing to do with this. But she did tell her sister and when your whole family is HYDRA, it naturally leads to this. He breaks out of the ropes holding him down, but Katie’s father has captured his family and friends so he’ll settle down rather than punching through him like he’s made of plywood.
He chews Miles out stating that his actions have cost them a number of agents despite losing his mother because of his actions, but he’s alive because Katie asked that he be given a chance and he’s a valuable piece of genetic engineering. Miles tries to flee, only to get shot because for some reason he forgot he has camouflage powers and Spider-Sense and Agility, only for Doom to show up with Jessica Drew in tow.
Okay, review time….
To be fair, Doom had made it clear he was going to get Miles back in the All New X-Men series, so I really wasn’t surprised. Even if the cover hadn’t given him away. I’d consider it proper continuity, but the Ultimate Universe is doomed next issue anyway so it doesn’t matter.
Still, 4 out of 5.
Scarlet Spiders #3 (Tie-In Final Issue) Review
A hero dies in Scarlet Spiders #3 (Tie-In Final Issue)! Read my recap and review below!
The comic begins with an overview of Ben Reilly’s life, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about who’s going to bite the bullet. Kaine is the Other and Jessica is part of the only Ultimate Universe series still active, so she’s not going to die in an event that doesn’t tie in there. Anyway, he’s a Spider-Man, so he’s suffered every pain imaginable, but he earnestly believes what is right and just will prevail. That being said, things look grim as, despite him and Kaine wailing on the bastard, Jennix doesn’t go down easy.
Eventually Kaine decides to break out the stingers and start tearing into the Inheritor since, unlike Ben, he realizes this is a fight of extinction and he refuses to be slaughtered like some animal. Jennix instantly awakes from a clone and then gets shot by a turret that Jessica hacked. Ben wants her to shut it down for two reasons: If they regain control of it then they’re all screwed, and they don’t kill.
Jessica and even Jennix point out the futility of upholding that rule in this circumstance of this, but he instead states that it’s also pointless to keep killing him over and over since they need to trap him. Jessica happens to be at the receiver that sends the signal to wake the clones, but she runs into the Human Torch as an obstacle to doing that… and then she knocks him out in like three seconds flat to go and help the boys.
Ben thinks back, while nursing a concussion, about how he had always done right in the past and it was Peter who lost everything in his world while even getting the acceptance Peter didn’t. But things aren’t looking so hot here, and Jennix makes it clear he has thousands of these facilities, so it was all pointless. But, being a science expert himself, Ben realizes that the signal comes from this facility and tells Jennix he’s going to destroy it to stop them from coming back.
He succeeds, buying the other spiders time to run, but the act apparently kills him in the process with only his torn mask left behind. While Jessica tells Kaine not to let the ugliness of his death poison him, Kaine promptly gives into the Other, using it as fuel and hijacking a portal to Loom world to kill them while they can’t revive themselves.
In the end, they won but it wasn’t without sacrifices.
Okay, review time…
I loved the tie-in, but Ben Reilly dying was still hard. I mean, you could see it coming, but it still hurts because between the cynical Kaine and realistic Jessica, we see that the optimistic one was the one that bit the bullet. Other than that it was a pretty solid tie-in.
The issue and series gets a 5 out of 5.
Scarlet Spiders (Spider-Verse Tie-In) #2 Review
The Scarlet Spiders Spider-Verse Mini-Event continues in issue #2! Here’s my recap and review!
The comic picks up with the evil Johnny Storm realizing something is wrong with this scenario only to get knocked out while he’s Flamed-On. Ben has to abandon the Iron Man suit because Kaine points out that the suit probably has fail-safes on it and Jennix would be able to pull him in and peel him out of it like a sardine. Their cover is blown, which Jessica doesn’t like since her plan ultimately hinged on her being the decoy rather than them, so they have to wing it.
Ben and Kaine get into where they keep the clones. It turns out Jennix has about a thousand clones divided into levels for him and his siblings. When one dies their consciousness is transferred into the body and then released. Kaine votes on destroying the entire building, but Ben doesn’t want to since it means everyone else would go with it, so that means they’ll have to try a little harder than that.
Meanwhile, Jennix isn’t paying much attention to the fight since he has other things to handle. He tells Dr. Warren to simply keep monitoring the situation and if they make it to the special projects then he’ll run interference. It shows he’s both cocky and delegates his workload like a proper mad scientist should.
The spiders split up with Jessica playing the spymaster until she can get somewhere to interfere with the counter-measures, Kaine goes to deal with the main power cells, and Ben stays behind to try to do something in the clone room. Kaine… he wrecks the hell out of the security detail, with the caption mentioning that while he doesn’t have much of a life outside of violence, he’s making the most out of it. Then he finds something so shocking he has to go get Ben and the technician.
It turns out that special project is that Jennix has been cloning Spiders and these are the failures. Given what Kaine has gone through, it triggers a rage moment and that alerts Jennix that they are there. So Jennix makes good on his promise and goes to deal with them personally after showing them some footage of his experiments and how the clones don’t contain any of the essence that they have. As the comic ends Jennix makes it clear he’s going to turn them into an experiment once he’s done kicking them around.
Okay, review time….
I loved it for a tie-in. It got straight to the point and we have everyone in the roles they’re meant to play. 5 out of 5.
Scarlet Spiders #1 of 3 Review
Scarlet Spiders is out now and contains two of my favorite Spider people, so naturally I’m going to review it! How does the first issue go? Read my review and find out!
The comic opens up and follows the thoughts of Jessica Drew, the Spider-Woman (Black Widow now) from the Ultimates Universe, as she, Ben Reilly, and Kaine venture to the world where the clones came from. The city is beautiful, in contrast to a villain like you would expect from Doom. But they can’t exactly go out looking like they do, even if they are cloaked from the Inheritors.
Kaine fetches some smocks for them and they discuss the invisibility suit before they run out and meet a bunch of clones. The disguises don’t last three pages before they suit up again and get into a tussle with the security forces after the fighting spills out. Ben fights with grace and banter, Kaine goes with rage but restraint, and Jessica is the trained fighter of the group.
The fighting ends when Iron Man shows up, and Ben forgets they are on a villain controlled world. So he gets blasted into unconsciousness for two hours while they stripped Tony Stark of his armor. It turns out this Tony is a insufferably smug kiss-up which makes even the Superior Iron Man looks good, and that’s saying something, so they take his armor and use it to infiltrate the Baxter Building.
There Jessica breaks free and acts as a distraction while the other two go on ahead, but they get stopped as the comic ends by alternate universe Johnny Storm.
Okay, review.
In this issue we get more introspective into the different cloned spiders. Kaine beats the hell out of anyone in his way and lacks Peter’s smarts, but he’s been trying to be a hero to live up to his rep and has to temper his strength, which is greater than the others by a fair margin. Black Widow as the most training and strategic mind, while Ben still has Peter’s intelligence and witty nature.
All and all it’s not a bad start and I like the artwork. We’ll call it a 5 out of 5.
Amazing Spider-Man #10 Review (Spiderverse)
Amazing Spider-Man #10 Review (Spiderverse)
Okay, we continue from where we last left off, with Miles Morales being attacked by the crazy lady until Otto shows up with backup and tells them to Spider-Up or die. They follow him, with Miles under the assumption that Otto is Peter since he was wearing the same outfit as the last time he saw him during that colossal failure Cataclysm, but Verna destroys his mother’s grave stone, making it personal for Miles. Him and Mayday have much to discuss.
Meanwhile, at the Safe Zone, British Spider-Man tells him that he’s basically the only one who fought an Inheritor and won. He’s Harry Potter. Silk, on the other hand, is fishing around to see if any of the others give her the warm and tingly feeling like her Peter does, only getting a reaction from Kaine. Anyway, they’ve found where Otto’s group are and jump to them with Silk tagging along after being warned to stay behind. That won’t end well.
They meet up with Peter, Kaine, and Spider-Woman recognizing Otto, while Miguel recognizes that they’re in his timeline. Otto tells them they’ve ruined everything by showing up because the cloaking device he had built couldn’t hide them with both Kaine and Silk there because they give off huge signals. He’s right as Daemos arrives right then looking to go on a feeding frenzy.
They jump him and make him work for it, but Cyborg Spider-Man gets killed. Silk blames herself once they finally take him down, to which Old Man Spider agrees. Otto sees the loss as acceptable since because Kaine did a huge amount of damage and with a stasis charge in his arms he managed to stop the body disintegrating and they can perform science on it. Old Man Spider tells them that he knows what’s going on, but naturally he gets his neck snapped by Daemos as he arrives with his siblings.
Otto is more than a little pissed at losing his kill, but Ben, Kaine, and Jessica realize they can clone themselves to come back as many times as they want and set out to deal with that, Meanwhile Old Man Spider, who is Ezekiel of a different dimension where Morlun killed Peter, reveals that The Scion, The Bride, and The Other are the only spiders that matter and must be protected. My personal thought is Kaine, Miles, and Silk are the three most important totems.
Silk uses this opportunity to take Peter’s teleport device and lure the twins away, with Spider-Woman and Noir following and to be continued in Spider-Woman #1. I’m not covering that, but I’ve read it and to sum it up, Silk’s hero tendencies get Noir taken out of the fight and Spider-Woman’s jaded nature drives her to run away on her own out of guilt again. Miguel and a few others take the corpse to analyze it, with Daemos chasing after them.
With a moment’s reprieve Peter, Otto, and the other survivors return to the Safe Zone and Otto’s decided he’s taking charge with his claws out as the comic ends.
Okay, review time.
Now, this 5 out of 5 right off the bat since everything was great, but reasonably speaking if Otto somehow manages to take out the Peter with the power of a god, asspull.
Amazing Spider-Man #9 (Spider-Verse)
Okay, a lot is going on in Amazing Spider-Man #9 and these are my thoughts on probably the biggest issue yet in the Spider-Verse event.
The comic opens with Peter Parker being called in for work by JJJ, which is the first clue it’s not our Peter. The second is that Morlun gets his hands on him and starts feasting on him while the third is that they live on the moon. We then cut to Morlun’s siblings and the gluttonous one deciding to see what he’s hoarding on the 616-universe.
After that Peter gets woken up by Silk who tells him the solution to their problem when it comes to wanting to make spider-babies is for him to leave since the great web is closing in on him or something cryptic like that. This is further compounded when Mayday, Spider-UK, Anya, Miguel, Jessica Drew (616), and Spider-Ham, show up and tell him the short version that Morlun’s brother it coming. Peter immediately says to get in the damn portal before he shows up.
Kaine is not so lucky as the glutton found him and attacked the New Warriors (they’ll probably make it). He tries to skewer him with his Other powers, but that just makes the glutton want him more until Gwen Stacy, Ben Rilley, and Bruce Banner show up with the Old Man Spider. They get Kaine out but Bruce gets his spine snapped and they have to leave him behind.
All the spiders meet up on Earth-13, a safe zone because the Spider-Man there still has the power of a god and the only reason he hasn’t gone after the Inheritors is because his power is tied to his dimension. Anyway, long story short they need Peter there because he’s supposedly the chosen one. The comic ends in the Ultimate Universe as Jessica Drew (1610) and Miles Morales come under fire by the glutton’s sister.
We then get an epilogue where the head of the Inheritors holds a feast on a number of Spiders, quells his children’s squabbling, and then reveals he knows all connected to the great web after enslaving the Master Weaver before they munch on the collected Spider-Men.
Okay, okay review time.
A lot going on, most of it I like. There are some glaring issues, like the text being wrong and you have to wonder why they would just call out their secret identities in public. But I do like the characterizations of a good number of the spiders and the story is moving.
I give it full marks, 5 out of 5.
All-New Ultimates #4 Review
Not exactly enthusiastic about this issue, but I’ll review it all the same. This is my review of All-New Ultimates #4.
The comic begins with the detective who was killed by having Styx lay hands on him waking up in the autopsy room and walking off into the streets. He promptly gets run over by a truck driver who had a gun and looked like he was committing a crime, besides the aforementioned hit-and-run, and falls into a sewer. This is the type of thing I would suspect in regular Marvel, but meh.
Meanwhile, the girls of the team decide to have a day out at Coney Island. Kitty’s naturally too famous to be wandering around, but she manages to play it off like she’s just a look-a-like, while Dagger secretly stops a criminal from getting away. The girls then chill out on the beach.
With the guys, Cloak is defending his turf from a few junkies while Miles and Ganke discuss how he got kissed by the villain who kicked his ass a few issues ago. That’s the last we see of them this issue as the girls talk about their love-lives next and Jessica drops the bombshell about being a clone of Peter Parker and that she has an interest in females, specifically redheads and Jewish girls. That ends when Lana gets a call from her boyfriend, who gets shot in the head minutes later. Second boyfriend of hers to bite the dust, I want to mention, as the next two pages cover a gang war going on between the various factions.
Lana goes home to check on him only to find him dead and get a face-full of Devil’s Dust from the Serpent Skulls, who came after them for breaking up the last deal. While under the effects of the powder she’s not in control of her actions and Diamondback plans on having her lead them to the rest of the team. Two of the men threaten to do unsavory things, but Diamondback cuts that shit out right there. She’ll kill, but she won’t tolerate that shit.
The comic ends with Lana crying as she stares helplessly at Poey’s corpse, about to be used as a tool to kill the rest of the New Ultimates.
Okay, review time…
Yeah, this issue is getting a hit from me. Not only was it boring, considering it was a downtime issue in the middle of an arc rather than the end, but we cut to what amounts to a Gang War going on everywhere and these guys are taking a day off!
Anyway, 3 out of 5 at best.
All-New Ultimates #3 Review
Better late than never, here’s my review of All-New Ultimates #3!
Our story begins with Jessica being treated for her poison. It turns out that that mixture was meant to be lethal if her body wasn’t different from another person, so it was a close call in the end. Good thing Jessica knew someone willing to help an ex-SHIELD member. As she and Kitty make their way back, Kitty agrees to go patrolling with her next time.
While this is going on the masked dude from the last time goes out to buy a newspaper to see if he made the headlines putting bullets into gangsters. When the newspaper gets it wrong and assume it’s gang-related he decides that everyone would know his name, one way or another. Ego maniac on top of everything else does not make a good vigilante.
Meanwhile school’s out and Lana goes about asking around for her boyfriend, Poey, who should have been killed in Cataclysm or Lana was dating Sid at the same time she was dating Poey. Leaving the plot hole aside, it turns out he’s a drug dealer and Lana manages to sweet talk him into bringing her along for a re-up while Miles looks on.
At a coffee shop two of the minor characters who I didn’t pay much attention to are discussing the Skulls and the fact that Cloak and Dagger have been taking them down around the Westside Church. The only other thing of importance to note is that someone who supposedly got killed apparently walked out of the autopsy room.
Jessica and Kitty are out on patrol in the rain when they encounter the skull dude from before spray painting his name, Scourge, at the site of a kill. Jessica is still woozy, so she’s in no condition to help, leaving Kitty to go after him while she calls for back-up. Unfortunately the call comes in while Miles was spying on the deal with Lana there and grabs their attention. I’d like to point out how it was both stupid of him to have his phone on and question why he wasn’t in his camouflage mode. Did the writers just forget this or what?
Cloak and Dagger arrive to help Kitty chase the guy after he blinded her, but the sneaky bastard gets away. At the same time, Miles pretty much solos the drug bust, although he does get knocked around when some dude gets on his back because he seems to have forgotten his Venom Strike. Lana has to get her boyfriend out before she gets involved and helps him wrap things up before leaving with Poey to maintain her cover.
The comic ends with them all meeting up again and resolving to stick together.
Okay, review time….
So far I can’t really say I like the comic. The art is… stable, so I won’t take points off for that. But at times the characters do things that they should know better on and continuity errors. Poey, for example, should know about her powers since he was the one who wouldn’t let her come over when she was being chased by Cloak and Dagger in Ultimate Spider-Man when Miles got back in the game.
It gets a 3 out of 5.
All-New Ultimates #2 Review
A bit late, but here’s my review of All-New Ultimates #2.
The story starts with the battle still underway and the New Ultimates are in their first dust-up gone wrong and turned into a mess. It quickly turn into the Serpent Skulls versus everyone else and they’ve got numbers on their side. I see a lot of issues in the fight alone, namely Miles getting hit by an opponent who isn’t faster than him while he has Spider-Sense. He shouldn’t be touched at all in this fight, although he’s still inexperienced, neither should Jessica have gotten jabbed by a needle. They been in goddamn war and came out better than this.
Anyway, the fight ends abruptly when SWAT shows up. Diamondback, who seems to have a thing for younger men in spider outfits kisses Miles goodbye as Cloak pulls the rest of the group out of there and back to their base in Hell’s Kitchen, where Cloak is down for the count because of Styx’s touch while Lana flat-out quits because apparently her powers weren’t working during the fight properly and she nearly got killed. They seemed fine to me, but she knows her body better I guess.
Back with the police in the alley, they’re summing up the situation with the only causalities being Styx and the police he grabbed, while someone wearing a hobo mask kills Stone out of what they claimed was justice. Given his experiments led to this, the guy is probably another victim. The Serpent Skulls themselves also note just how big a mess that brawl was and decide to move things faster and quicker since the police and the super kids are working at different angles, but because some other gang is knocking off their own they‘ve decided to just kill all the other gangs to show them what a kill sweep is.
We then go through a series of panels showing that Jessica was poisoned and tells Kitty, who decided she would join in, to call someone for help as she passes out, Miles is recovering from his own ass-whipping with an ice-pack while Cloak seems to be having trouble with his powers, Dagger is stretching, the guy who killed Stone is killing more people in the name of justice, the cop who got hit by Styx died and Lana’s boyfriend stood her up… again, didn’t her boyfriend get crushed by a car?
The comic ends there.
Okay, review time.
I’m not going to lie. This comic isn’t meeting my expectations, but since it’s the first arc I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. But, while Miles is technically still a rookie, Jessica shouldn’t have gotten her ass-kicked like that. Kitty joining the team felt forced.
Issue gets a 3 out of 5.
All-New Ultimates #1 Review
All New Ultimates has arrived, the series that takes the teen heroes from the Ultimates line and makes them into a unit of ass-kicking vigilantes. Here’s hoping they aren’t as dysfunctional as their predecessors as I review the first issue.
Our story begins with a group shot as they discuss their units name shortly after the end of the Cataclysm: Survive and, immediately after, we go to Hell’s Kitchen in the morning. This place is a nightmare in the regular continuity, so it should come as no surprise Ganke Lee is promptly mugged by some gangbangers with superpowers until Cloak and Dagger pop up to save him. It seems like they’ve been doing this for a bit since this is the third time this week they’ve had to kick ass and take names according to them. They try to get him to go to a hospital, but he declines so they take him to their home.
Like their counterparts they reside in an abandoned church and are soon joined by Miles, the new Spider-man, since Ganke is his BFF (their caption, not mine). It turns out Ganke came to get some Legos, which leads me to think that his obsession is unhealthy, but Miles claims not to judge so why should I? Anyway, they leave as we skip to the Lower East Side, where some cops have busted into a Poor Man’s Roxxon-lab only to find a half-melted corpse as the two suspects have run away.
Back in the Church Lana has arrived after talking to her parole officer and immediately bags on Cloak and Dagger’s home and they exchange phone numbers using SHIELD tech since the organization has been scrapped for failing to stop Galactus. Then they get down to business. Since Roxxon was no longer under SHIELD’s protection, for the reasons listed above, a local gang seized one of their labs and has been giving out what amounts to untested Mutant Growth Hormone. Naturally this ends with a high rate of fatalities and they want to resolve this. So they go the vigilante route, although I think Lana’s parole officer might have something to say about that.
In Chelsea Kitty Pryde is staying in Jessica’s place. She’s having second thoughts about everything. First she was hated as the leader of the mutants, now everyone loves her for punching out Galactus while hopped up on Giant Man Serum until Thor tossed his ass into the Negative Zone. She doesn’t want to be in the spotlight and doesn’t want to go back to Utopia for some reason, so she crashes with Jessica who asks her for a haircut.
Lana makes it to her government housing just as the two suspects from the lab, Stone and Styx, try to break into an old Roxxon outpost. The Serpent Skulls are already there and Lana hears the resulting squabble and gets her new team involved…and gets their butts kicked by Styx and Stone until the cops show up and decide to try and arrest them all. So it’s back to people getting ready to shoot at Miles already.
Things go pear shape as Styx melts the skin off one of the cops trying to get Miles and the other cop shoots him dead. Then the Serpent Skulls pop out of the lab intent on beating the hell out of everyone without a tattoo. The comic ends with the leader of the game, Diamondback, telling them to get started.
Okay, review time.
I’ve got to say this isn’t exactly a strong start for their new series. Leaving aside the artwork being inferior to the Ultimate Comics Spider-Man and the characters looking awkward at time, some of their dialogue seems out of character and there seems to be some continuity errors.
For example, Poey was the nickname of Lana’s boyfriend, Sid. He was crushed to death in Cataclysm by a random car to spur her into the hero scene. Now, while I’m all for retconning that meaningless death, I need some sign prior to this that he made it.
Then Jessica’s combat abilities seem to have been downplayed. Let’s be frank, she has training and Spider-Sense (and it’s not the weak version Miles has). She shouldn’t get hit by someone without super powers or extreme circumstances like war.
All in all, I can’t give this more than a 3 out of 5 and hope they do better next issue.
Twilit Dreams Circle 